Pratik Kanjilal

These were stories of homecoming, by a writer who was uneasy in his ancestral home. Such uneasiness about one’s cultural moorings may be seen as an act of assertion, of the need for the writer’s identity to be rooted only in the self.

Did a cartridge made of cow and pig fat really spark the 1857 Revolt? Even contemporary accounts of the events of 1857 report this as a rumour, and some speculate that it was circulated by the wily gentlemen of Awadh.

How a British bureaucrat breathed new life to the old tale of Malik Muhammad Jaisi’s Padmavati. A spate of prose retellings of the metrical epic on the Rajput queen followed on the heels of the controversy.

Trump was responding to De Niro’s reprise of his famous role in Raging Bull at the Tony awards. Before introducing the nominees, he had said: “It’s no longer ‘down with Trump’, it’s ‘(expletive deleted by editor) Trump’.”